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Posts tagged ‘American Civil War’

May 3

Dying Declarations – Last Words in the hands of Historians

By Alex Wakelam @A_Wakelam

In May 1906 the great Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen lay in his sick bed. That evening an old friend arrived from town to see the aged tragedian. Entering the room he greeted the nurse with “How is Mr Ibsen today?” “Oh”, she cheerily replied, “he’s doing much better.” At this Ibsen sat up incredulous in bed declaring “Tvert imod!” (tr. On the contrary!) upon which he fell back into his pillow unconscious, dying shortly thereafter.[1] For a writer whose characters rarely even cracked a smile, he managed to exit the world with one of the finest deathbed jokes in history. Read more

Oct 27

Slavery, diplomacy, war: A Confederate propagandist in London

By Bennett Ostdiek

On January 22, 1862, nine months into the American Civil War, Henry Hotze arrived in London. Hotze had come to London to serve as a propaganda agent for the Confederate States of America. His mission was simple – to convince Her Majesty’s Government to grant official diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy. Both Hotze and the Confederate government believed that once Britain recognized Southern independence as an accomplished fact, the United States government would do the same and give up its military efforts to bring the seceded states back into the Union. At stake was nothing that than the independence of his homeland and the future of its signature institution – slavery.

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